The Creation of Stone Tools

Introduction

From the earliest proto-simians to the modern Homo sapiens, humanity has been in a constant state of evolution. Many evolutionary trappings have signified these changes over the course of human development, such as standing upright on two legs, or the expansion of the skull to hold a larger brain. However, one of the most iconic and important steps in human evolution is the development of stone tools. While many animals in nature use natural tools, like sticks, humans utilizing stones for tools was a major advancement that led to a significant amount of progress in human evolution, especially in terms of human society.

The subject of stone tools is one of the most diverse and intriguing subjects related to human evolution. Rather than just the physical changes, the evolution of stone tools alongside human evolution captures the mental shift of humans between "mere apes" and what would eventually become Homo sapiens, which is vitally useful for understanding how humans began to become more civilized.

Visiting the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History

I chose to research this topic at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. The focus of the visit was the section on human evolution, and that exhibit's displays on stone tools. One of the aspects of stone toolmaking were a wide variety of "stone handaxes", rocks with large chunks broken off. These have been found in several continents around the world, dating back as late as 1.7 million years ago. These handaxes allowed trees to be chopped down efficiently, which allowed for usable wood to be harvested in larger amounts. This inevitably led to the ability to create settlements out of wood, a major step towards the creation of civilizations in the future.

Another important part of the exhibit was the "Stone anvil and hammerstone with oil palm nuts", found in Guinea. This evidence shows that chimpanzees would use stones as tools (technically the most primitive form of stone tools), taking a rock and smashing it against a nut laid out on another rock to break open the shell and get at the nutrient-rich nut within. This shows that the drive to use stones as tools was present in humans as early as their primate relatives, and raises some intriguing anthropological questions. Perhaps it was a lack of dexterity and hand-eye coordination that was the primary barrier to creating more sophisticated tools, and not simply a lack of intelligence? After all, the use of tools has been documented in many animal species before. Humans simply created the most advanced ones.

Reflections on the Experience

One of the most interesting things to me about this project is how something as simple as strangely-shaped stones was capable of such a wide variety of tasks, depending on the shape. Stones were used as weapons, farming implements, and even containers. These were the first steps for a history of iterations that would build on each other throughout history, all originating from a single spark of genius. At this point in time, there was genuinely no foundation for the creation of these stone tools- except for potential evolutionary impulses, or inspiration, from monkeys. This could easily be another thing we have in common with our evolutionary cousins.

The stone tools used by early humans have foundations in stone tools used by primate species, like the chimpanzee. Stone tools used by hominids arrive later, but still date back as early as 2.6 million years ago, with their proliferation continuing for well over a million years. These tools had a wide variety of uses, which included being fashioned into hunting or protective weapons, such as spears for piercing the hides of large animals, farming implements, such as mortars and pestles for grinding up grains, and pottery to hold things in. The creation of these stone tools allowed for the harvesting of more advanced resources, which in turn led to the creation of advanced tools and structures (such as domiciles made from chopping down trees and using the wood). Thus it can be said that the invention and proliferation of stone tools was extremely important for the development of civilizations which would occur afterward.

Questions

1. What possible evolutionary factors do you think could have inspired the development of stone tools?

2. What are some objects in our everyday life that could be considered evolutions of ancient stone tools?